Last year, Blood Energy Potion, a little plastic bag of red liquid covered in claims that it “contain[ed] similar nutritional value to blood,” was marketed as a horror-themed alternative to the overcaffeinated calorie bombs being sold as energy drinks. I found myself enjoying the stuff, especially when heated and served in a skull-shaped chalice, so I was perfectly happy when a new novelty IV bag, Zombie Blood Energy Potion, was sent along to review.

Zombie Blood Energy Potion is identical to its fruit-punch-flavored counterpart, except the taste is lime and the appearance is thick and green. Also, and this is important: serve it cold. While the warm red stuff gave the sensation of fruity gore from the source, zombies clearly don’t have natural body heat and their blood is meant to be chilled. In fact, the thick texture had lost its appeal halfway through the bag, so I poured the rest into a tumbler over ice. The flavor is positioned somewhere between green Hi-C and those sugar rushes in a plastic barrel I used to get at soccer games. In fact, while the makers of Blood Energy Potion do not advocate the consumption of alcohol with these products, it did occur to me that finishing off the glass with a shot of light rum or silver tequila was not an entirely bad idea.

After a tense moment with a rum-flavored devil poised on my left shoulder urging me to tip the bottle and a second devil on my right shoulder slurring in Spanish, I forewent the booze and finished my Zombie Blood Energy Potion straight up on the rocks. As before, I experienced a pleasant alertness for several hours with no aftereffects, and felt well-equipped to enjoy an afternoon in June. All in all, a very nice little number, sir.

Which clearly just wasn’t good enough. You’ve noticed how toy commercials on TV all feature subtitles explaining that, in real life, the advertised products do not talk or perform magic? I belong to the generation that inspired that fine print. After numerous panic attacks over our G.I. Joes failing to be sentient beings that moved on their own, clearly due to their suffocation in that vacuum-plastic packaging, or knocking out our teeth trying to Pogo Ball over a fence, our mothers brought so many complaint calls, letters and class-action suits to manufacturers that you can probably also thank us if modern Saturday-morning cartoons solely depict cats serving mice lemonade in lieu of entertaining violence.

I share this background information because a part of that insane child is still alive inside me, and since we can surely all agree that drinking zombie blood will turn you into a zombie, when a product is called Zombie Blood, that means it is supposed to turn you into a zombie. After imbibing a pouch, I felt nothing less than plucky and in control of all my faculties, without a single impulse to crack open the heads of the living and shamble through a mall. Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew a promise had been broken, because this stuff just doesn’t work. Luckily, Fango had sent me five of them…

With the same insane child reasoning that “if it doesn’t work, just use more,” I downed the remaining four pouches of Zombie Blood Energy Potion in a manic green splash and felt the adrenalized panic of a human in his last hours, followed by what felt like a sugar crash but was clearly a Flyboy-style pre-zombie coma. I twitched on the floor for a while, waking to the sound of a good friend returning my borrowed bicycle pump. In spite of my groans of protest, she helped me to my feet, and, being several inches taller than her, I found myself in the perfect position to notice that her head smelled like freshly baked sugar cookies. Realizing that the transformation had occurred and this was the scent of her delicious brains, I decided that there was no better way to commit to my new place in society than by tragically devouring a loved one. As my teeth scraped her scalp I felt the firm placement of her knee in my balls, and promptly returned to my previous position on the floor. In the immobility that followed, I discerned that the smell had been less tasty encephalon than vanilla-scented shampoo, and my attempt to attack her was not so much out of being a zombie but more easily blamed on my pre-existing chemical imbalance.

So consider my lessons learned: Zombie Blood Energy Potion is a fine product, but should never be used as a substitute for prescribed anti-psychotics, and even when committing to the premise that you are now undead, the brain-eating is best served by pantomime. Groan and shamble responsibly, kids.

Zombie Blood Energy Potion is available for purchase at www.livingwithbloodlust.com and various retailers.

 

---

Reviews - Merchandise Reviews